Puente de Praga

The name crosses half of Europe: it comes from Prague, capital of what was then Czechoslovakia. The city council assigned it in 1932, under the Second Republic, to the bridge that crossed the Manzanares, extending the paseo de Santa María de la Cabeza towards the carretera de Toledo. Before that learned christening, Madrileños called it something else. The first structure, a metal footbridge from around 1925, mainly served to move cattle to the municipal Slaughterhouse on the Arganzuela bank. Hence its nickname: the Slaughterhouse bridge, with the herds filing over the river towards the kill. In 1952 the dictatorship tried to impose the name of the Heroes of the Alcázar of Toledo, but the neighbourhood went on saying Prague. The foundations failed, and in the 1960s the present prestressed-concrete bridge was built. In 2009 the council unanimously restored the historic name: Prague returned to the Manzanares.